Bones
by Empathist
Summary: 13th August 2013. Brendan reflects on his first meeting with Steven three years before. One-shot.


My cellmate's alright. Quiet, which is what you want when you're banged up together all night and most of the day, every night, every day. He don't bother me and I don't bother him.

He's got his parole hearing coming up, and he's counting the days, crossing them off on a calendar on the wall. Course there's no guarantee it'll go right for him. Could be he's setting himself up for a shitload of disappointment, and the way I see it, ticking off each day as it passes just messes with your head, because all the good ones are behind you getting further into the past and you don't know how many of the kind of day you're having now – the dark ones, the ones that you're not living – you've got to get through before you get to the good days again. That's if there are any good days lying ahead at all.

The lights have come on, and we're waiting for the wardens to come along and unlock the doors for the morning. Some prisons give you your breakfast in your cell, and you have to hope your cellmate saves his morning shit until after, but here we're lucky and get to go to the canteen. I'm lying on my bed – the top bunk – and he's standing over by the wall with his back to me, with his pen in his hand.

_Thirteenth_, he says. _Three more months, Brendan, that's all_.

_Lucky for some_, I say to him, and then I look over his shoulder at the calendar, and he's put a circle around the thirteen, and something is triggered in my head, and I get this feeling like my chest is being squeezed. Not my chest: the heart inside it.

August thirteenth. _Fuck_.

:::::::

I wasn't on the lookout. Only been there a week, hadn't I, or just over, and I was still getting the feel of the village, figuring out who the players were and where the opportunities lay. Taking advantage of the opportunities too, pulling in an old contact to enable my sister to buy this useful little club she'd set her heart on. Positioning myself, so to speak. So finding a shag wasn't top of my to do list. I knew the itch would come and it would need scratching, but I guess I intended to get that done on business trips, not under my sister's nose, at least at first. I'd played that game in Belfast, fooling around with someone too close to home, and I won't deny that the risk gave it an edge – but at the end of it I'd had to run, and I didn't fancy running again just yet.

There was a lad that crossed my mind, but he crossed out of it straight off. Rhys Ashworth. Came for an interview for a bar job, and he was a nice looking kid, no denying it, and he had a swagger about him that was a bit of a front. I liked that. Only I got the feeling that, whatever insecurities he was hiding, the bottom line was that he was at home in his own skin, and anyhow there was something going on between him and the girl we hired alongside him, Jacqui. Neither of them said so but it was obvious it was going to happen if it hadn't already, and I'd be wasting my time. I mean, I'm good, but I'm not that good, and I can go without if I have to; always could.

The day the club opened was the day that changed everything. Not that I knew it at the time.

Cheryl didn't have much of a clue back then about business matters, so I'd made most of the phone calls, got the bar stocked and the licence sorted and the flyers printed. It was down to her to hire a caterer for the opening event though, and she'd gone up the road to the local restaurant but ended up getting the kid that did the cooking there to undercut his own boss. And that kid walked in with these trays of food he'd made, and I strolled over to have a look at them.

I told Cheryl they looked rubbish and we should go back to Tony, the fella who owned the restaurant, and then this kid started arguing, righteous, telling us how hard he'd worked on them. Accent from a Manchester street corner. My sister took his part, told him they were perfect. _Ste_, she called him. What kind of a name was that? Anyhow she wanted me to apologise to him for being mean and slagging off his canapés: she wanted a happy ship, she said. Yeah. And then he looked at me, the boy Steven did, smug, all sharp nose and sharp cheekbones and cheap haircut and cheap scent, and I thought fuck that, and I walked off. He hollered after me, _Apology accepted_. Fuck that.

I didn't think about him again till after the party got going. I went into the office with a bottle of Champagne and Mitzeee, the local tabloid fodder – first time I met her too – to brush up my reputation and, it turned out, to look at some of her magazine shoots on the office computer, which kept her amused. Then when I walked out of there, Steven was waiting for me. He accused me of stealing my sister's booze, said he wanted a job seeing as how Tony had sacked him for this little catering scam of his. _What positions have you got? _he asked me._ Anything to keep my mouth shut._

Jesus.

He thought he was being clever, thought he could get one over on me so I punched him, knocked him clean out. He was flat on his back on a table, and in the few seconds before he came round, his face was... I didn't have time to reflect because Hell broke loose, he woke up, and from then on it was damage limitation, spinning a line to Cheryl about what had happened. Then she came to find me at the bar while he was getting patched up in the office, and she told me he was threatening to go to the police. I don't know, something about that didn't ring true: lads like him tended to keep out of the way of the law, so I reckoned it was just a threat – his second attempt at blackmail that day, on top of defrauding his erstwhile employer. He was accumulating quite a charge sheet.

Next thing, the press showed up. Someone had called them. So I grabbed Steven, hauled him outside down the fire escape stairs by the scruff of his scrawny neck.

He was stroppy, asked me what I was going to do, hit him again? Not like he was scared, but like it was the kind of shit that happened. Looked me in the eye as he denied calling the press, petulant, skinny as you like but fighting his corner as if he was used to getting back up after a scrap. I asked him, _You want a job, right?_ and he grabbed on to that, sharp as. _Yeah_, he said, _Which is exactly why I wouldn't call the press_. All I was thinking was, if he was an employee, I could prevent him from talking to the papers. Then he said something and it surprised me. He said he'd got no job, he'd got two kids, and all he needed was a break. Two kids, and he was a kid himself, like I was when mine were born.

I threw him a bone to keep him quiet, a job in the club on a week's trial. Damage limitation, that was what it was.

_Thanks. You're not gonna regret this, I swear, yeah?_ It was like someone had switched on a light inside him. Like _I_ had.

I told him if he ever so much as joked about calling the cops on me, I'd make orphans of his kids. Yeah, not my finest hour: his kids, who became _our_ kids for a few weeks before we lost them, before I lost him. I don't know if he believed that threat – I never asked him, we never talked much about those days – but anyhow it wasn't true because I wasn't a killer back then. I wasn't a killer until I killed for him.

I touched him, straight after the threat; kind of, patted his cheek, and I felt his eyes on me as I walked back into the club.

He was good as gold when he was talking to the reporter after that. He said there was no punch at all, he just lost his footing and I caught him as he fell. Said I was _heroic_. That was a nice touch, and I made a mental note of his convincing way with a lie. He was smart. It was a long time before I told him so, but I knew it right from that first day.

He wasn't on my mind once he'd kept his side of the bargain. The party went on into the night, and I didn't give him a thought. I don't know if he left along with the rest of the staff when Cheryl and I locked up, or if he'd already gone by then; he was nothing different from the others.

He wasn't on my mind, he was nothing different from the others, until I woke up in the early hours and he was in my head. I could see him, clear as day: the jacket he was wearing when he first came into the club, oversized on him and shapeless, heavy and weatherproof on a Summer's day. The way it hung on him, you could tell there was nothing of him, and he had to be all bones to feel the cold enough to wear it. Later he wasn't wearing it, he was wearing black, and then you could see for sure that he was thin as a whip.

The details I remembered of him came as a surprise to me as I lay in bed. The excitement on his face when he first tried to push me into giving him a job, like he didn't often get a bright idea, he didn't often feel powerful, so his enjoyment of that moment was unfiltered by cool or caution. And then his face again when I'd flattened him and he was spark out, all the attitude gone, and for that few seconds he looked like an angel fallen from above, except for the bloody nose. I don't think angels crash land. And then later when I took him outside and told him he had a job, there was that unmediated joy again, no mask, no guile, until my threat to make orphans of his kids – and that was when I saw there was hurt in his blue eyes, but his gaze didn't break. He was tough, I could tell.

When I touched his face it was smooth and cool.

And when he sat bullshitting the girl from the local paper, he looked at me again, and lying there in the dark I could recall his expressions. _Aren't I clever. Am I doing good?_ And there was a moment when I'd glanced at him and his mouth was hanging open, and maybe my mind had wandered then.

It was easy as I closed my eyes, alone in the heat of the night and on the edge of sleep, to put those details together and let my imagination take over. I imagined peeling away his layers of clothes till he was naked in front of me, satin-skinned and so narrow my hands would meet around his waist if I squeezed hard enough. His bones thin enough to snap but young enough that they might bend instead. His mouth opening as he looked at me, his eyes defiant and compliant, saying _Fuck you_ and _Fuck me_. He'd be a virgin ready to be undone, and I'd show him what he really was, what he'd been waiting to be while he'd screwed away his teenage years with limpid girls who didn't know how a man should be handled.

It wasn't a plan, not that night. It was a fantasy to wank over after a long day: could have been anyone, couldn't it? But in the morning when I woke up again, I had it in mind to keep my eye on him, just in case he was someone I could use.

:::::::

My cellmate has gone to have his breakfast. He'll be telling anyone who'll listen that he's just got three months to go until he gets his parole, and he'll be out and back with his girl – the girl who never visits, the girl whose brother he murdered.

They don't all go mad after a few years inside, but enough of them do to make me want to do what it takes to keep myself sane, and what it takes for me is holding on to what was real.

I get dressed then I climb back onto my bunk and shut my eyes.

He was real, the boy I met three years ago today, the boy I thought I might use. The man he became is real too, and I love the bones of him.

I don't have to piece together a picture of him from scant details like I did the night of the day I met him, because now, I know him. I know the scent of him when he's fresh from the bath, his skin still wet with drops of water glinting on it, and the hairs on his legs flattened under my palm, and his toes flexing as my fingers dig into his sole.

I know the look on his face when I do something he thinks is soppy, like kissing his cheek or stroking his arm when he's standing in the kitchen doing the washing up: it's a look that says he's pleased, but he can't show me how pleased because he knows I'll be embarrassed then and cover it with an insult or the slam of a door. I know him, and he knows me. I never thought I would be known like that, but he changed everything.

I know the taste of his mouth. I know that his teeth feel clean as I sweep my tongue over and behind them. I know his tongue feels muscular when it meets mine, and our kisses can feel like combat, all incursion and defence. I know how his lower lip feels when I bite it, and I know I like biting it when he pouts at me, and I know it makes him madder.

I know him, see, and I know how to fuck him. I know how to open him, how gentle to be, how cruel. I know how to make his spine flex as my tongue pushes into his mouth and my fingers push into his hole, and I know when his nails score my flesh and his curses assault me that he's had enough finger fucking and he's crying out to feel my cock filling him. I know how hard to go to make him cry out, and how he'll get himself past the burning by taking control and heaving me into him till his head whips back and the sinews in his neck strain and stretch, and his limbs trap me and my head fills with flames.

I know when he wants me to ruin him, when he wants nothing of the world and I can give him his escape route, mapless and blindfold and abandoned as I fuck him till he's inside out. And I know when it's putting together that he needs, and I'll love him and honour him and keep him safe in my hands.

If I look at his cock after he has come, when its angry angle has weakened into a curve that flops against his thigh, I know that he'll blush; and if I touch it, and it's cooling and damp-tipped and soft in my hand, he will squirm. And if I laugh then at the blushing and the squirming, he'll say _Fuck off_ and roll away from me, and if I pursue him and press my chest against his back, his body – unlike his dick – will be rigid, and my _I love you, you idiot_ will be met with his _Whatever, Brendan_. So then I'll stroke his belly and kiss his neck until his hand on my hand tells me I'm forgiven (ish) and he'll twist his head round and meet my mouth with a loose-jawed, grudging kiss.

I know he's stronger than he looks. He's strong in ways I never would have guessed, strong enough to make me strong where I was weak. He's strong enough for both of us.

I know those things are real, because those are the things I've had.

What I don't know is, is he strong enough still, strong enough by himself? The thought tortures me that the strength he gave me was at the expense of his own. Sometimes I wake with his voice in my head, _No, no, no_, as they tore him from me five months ago, and it's the voice of a child and the fear of a child, and I know what can happen when a child's _No_ makes no difference, when his fear goes on and on. I know what that child can become, and I wonder what I've done. Steven has forgiven me for more than I'd a right to expect. He is more forgiving of my sins than God is likely to be, but I wonder if leaving him was a sin too far for him to forgive.

I turn my head on the pillow and look across at that calendar, with the thirteen circled.

Three years ago, it was a Friday. Friday the thirteenth of August – lucky for some.

_You're not gonna regret this, I swear._

Truth is he was right when he said that, because before I met him I didn't know who I was, but I do now, and that's thanks to him. I didn't know I could love until Steven showed me by loving me. I didn't believe that I could be a better man , but he made me believe that maybe I could. He gave me hope, and God knows I need it now.

I hope he knows that I love him. I hope he remembers that I'm never going to feel any differently about him, and believes it, and knows that I didn't leave him for the want of loving him. I hope he is better off without me – really I do – but a part of me, the selfish part that he didn't have time to fix, wants to think that he was better off with me. In my black heart I want him to lie awake like I do, and think of me, of us. I want him to remember my hands on him, my weight on him. I want him to feel the crush of how much I want him. I want him breathless when he thinks of me. But if he never thinks of me at all, if he's moved on with his life, then I just want him to think of me today.


End file.
